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I am really looking forward to going to The Life Coach School Mastermind. This episode will actually air after I return, but I will be sure to tell you all about my takeaways when I get back. I hope I got to connect with you there in person if you attended.

Today I’m talking about selling. It’s something so many of my clients struggle with. I struggle with certain types of selling — I’m definitely better at selling when I’m in front of one person in real time than I am at selling via copy. It’s a skill I’m developing.

Today I’m going to talk about the reason we struggle so much with selling. And I’m going to give you a different way to think about it that helped me shift my approach.

One of the things we struggle with most as coaches and entrepreneurs is believing that what we want is possible for us and that we are capable of figuring out how to achieve it and the second thing we struggle with most is being patient in the journey to get what we want.

My niece’s husband is an entrepreneur and the two of them have built a very sustainable business for themselves.

They took the best of both of them and capitalized on their respective strengths.

He recommended a book by Tom Hopkins called How To Master The Art Of Selling.

I haven’t even bought the book yet. I’ve only read a few pages of the Kindle sample and I already have my money’s worth.

This is the quote.: “Every successful person is good at selling himself or herself.”

This may not sound monumental, but where my brain went with this does feel monumental. That’s why I’m dedicating this entire podcast to sharing it.

We all know that things can shift for us in an instant. That doesn’t mean that we won’t ever struggle again with whatever limiting belief has shifted for us. But that door of opportunity can be unlocked in a way that you now KNOW with absolute certainty that you hold the key and can unlock it anytime you accidentally lock yourself out.

This is what happened for me when I read this one simple sentence. And my conclusion was this: This changes EVERYTHING.

I just hope I can do the shift in my brain enough justice to help you make this shift too. Here goes.

Here’s the quote again.

“Every successful person is good at selling himself or herself.”

So, so SIMPLE. I love SIMPLE. It doesn’t always mean it will lead to easy, but it’s a whole lot more likely than when you start with complicated.

Now, what I think the author meant by this is anyone who can sell them­selves to other people will succeed.  “Successful people are successful because they sell their ideas, beliefs and aims better than unsuccessful people.”

But I think selling ourselves to others begins with selling ourselves to us. This has implications for everything I’m doing right now.

I have been on a journey to sell myself on ME. I started that journey after the retreat I hosted last fall and I have learned so much. In fact, I’ve learned so much that I’m in the process of writing a book about that journey that I will be releasing soon. More about that later.

But the reason this quote hit me so profoundly was not because of the author’s intended meaning, but my interpretation of this simple sentence in light of the journey I’ve been on for about the last six months.

You see last year, everything I tried to sell, I did NOT master the art of selling myself. In fact, I sold everything but myself. I sold my process to MASTER Your Money Mindset. It’s a fabulous process and I’ll be re-launching that course this year along with group coaching calls.

I was selling the uncovering, the detection of Money Lies. A great concept …. that most people either didn’t understand or didn’t believe they had.

I was selling a great little bed and breakfast in Nashville where I held my retreat.

I was selling some great experts that supported the amazing guests at my retreat.

But here’s what I forgot to sell:

I forgot to sell myself. Which is what makes everything I sell so, so valuable. I come with every package I sell. My clients will tell you that is a STEAL of a DEAL.

And I forgot to sell myself ON myself.

I didn’t start with the most important thing. If you’re the product in your business, whatever package or program you’re selling, you’re selling YOU. So the thing you need to talk about the Most? YOU.

And that’s what so many of us struggle with. Talking about ourselves. We’ve been taught that it’s rude to talk about yourself. It’s mean or selfish to brag. It’s self-centered to think about yourself. So, most of us don’t know how to talk about ourselves, don’t know ourselves well enough or don’t know all the good things about us that make us valuable.

We don’t sell ourselves, because we haven’t yet sold ourselves on ourselves. That’s what’s missing in your offer. YOU.

We work so hard to get people to Know Like and Trust us and so little time talking about our gifts, our genius, our superpowers and what makes us so great to work with.

Although I don’t think this is what Tom Hopkins meant when he said, “Every successful person is good at selling himself or herself”, it’s the interpretation that’s certainly most powerful for you and me.

It’s MOST POWERFUL, because if you can sell yourself on yourself — if you can believe what you want about yourself instead of what feels most true, you can be successful.

Because once you convince yourself, it’s easy to convince others.

How easy is it to sell something we really really believe in?

When is the last time you recommended something to a friend? Think about that conversation.

Did you have any problem rattling off all the benefits and the results of whatever you were recommending?

Did you have any problem sharing every good thing about it?

Did you think to yourself, “Oh, I better not brag about this. She might think I’m self absorbed”?

When is the last time you shared something you believed 100% was true? And how did you share it? Sheepishly, tentatively, cautiously? When is the last time you really believed in something and had trouble finding the words to describe it as you were sharing it with someone else?

We don’t give it a second thought when we’re talking about someone or something other than us.

I’ve seen how quickly people are in the FaceBook Groups or Slack Groups I’m in to recommend someone when they see referral requests. They don’t hesitate to share a name or a website of someone they believe in.

Because when you believe it as the truth, you are willing to stand up for what you believe, you share it with bold, courageous confidence.

Think about anyone who volunteers to be Coached in a group and how confidently they stand by their problem and how they convey “the facts of the matter”. It’s because for them, it is the truth. They’ll sell you on what the problem is and why it’s a problem and they’ll sell you on why it’s so difficult to find a solution.

Can you imagine if they were so comm­itted to it not being a problem or to finding the best solution for them as they are to what they see as “the facts of the matter”? They sell the problem hard. I’ve done the same thing. I’m laser focused on that problem, so focused that I wouldn’t be able to see the solution if it ran me over.

What if instead we focused on what we wanted to be true?

This is true for any of us. Think about some problem you have. How easy is it to talk about? You’ll share it with anyone willing to listen and even those not willing to listen. You’ll obsess over it ad nauseum. You’re like a dog with a bone-you just won’t let it go. What if you were like this with the things that could help other people? What if you were willing to talk about yourself, how amazing you are, how gifted you are, how talented you are and all the problems you solve every single day.

If you could do that, Wow! You’d have Earth-shattering confidence.

I absolutely love the way that when we’re open to any shift to any possibility, to any direction, to information, insight, wisdom, knowledge, experience, coming to us from anywhere, literally anywhere, any of those things, any shift can come from just one tiny thing.

I don’t know if it was just the headspace I was in when I read that simple quote. But it just completely blew my mind.

It changed my entire perspective about selling.

I hope this has changed the way you approach selling. I hope you start noticing what you’re not sold on.

Then go figure out how to sell yourself on whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re selling.

Figure out what you ultimately want the truth to be and start working on selling yourself on that, day in and day out. Just like you would sell yourself on whatever you’re believing that doesn’t serve you and just how you sell other people on the things that don’t serve you.

I’m asking you to fight harder for the truth you want than you fight for the truth you don’t want.

When you show up sold on yourself, it’s EASY to sell yourself to other people. And that’s how you make money easy.

You find stuff that doesn’t work, like selling yourself on problems and where you’re falling short, and you stop doing that. You find what’s easy and what’s effective and you do that more.

Sell yourself on what you want and stop selling what you don’t want.

Are you going to keep selling yourself on your problems and your inability to solve them or are you going to sell yourself AND OTHER people on how AMAZING and TALENTED you are?

Let me know which one you’ll be doing. Until next time …. See yaaaaaa!!!